Home Pastorals, Ballads and Lyrics/Canopus

by Bayard Taylor

CANOPUS.

A LEAF FROM THE PAST.

Above the palms, the peaks of pearly grayThat hang, like dreams, along the slumbering skies,An urn of fire that never burns away,I see Canopus rise.

An urn of light, a golden-hearted torch,Voluptuous, drowsy-throbbing mid the stars,As, incense-fed, from Aphrodite's porchLifted, to beacon Mars.

Is it from songs and stories of the Past,With names and scenes that make our planet fair,—From Babylonian splendors, vague and vast,And flushed Arabian air:—

Or sprung from richer longings of the brainAnd spices of the blood, this hot desireTo lie beneath that mellow lamp againAnd breathe its languid fire?

From tales of nights when watching David sawIts amorous ray on bright Bathsheba's head;Or Charmian stole, the golden gauze to drawRound Cleopatra's bed?

Or when white-breasted Paris touched the loneLaconian isle, where stayed his flying oars,And Helen breathed the scent of violets, blownAlong the bosky shores?

Or Kalidasa's maiden, wandering throughThe moonlit jungles of the Indian lands,While shamed mimosas from her form withdrewTheir thin and trembling hands?

For Fancy takes from Passion power to buildA brighter fane than bloodless Thought decrees,And loves to see its spacious chambers filledWith tropic tapestries.

And, past those halls which for itself the mindBuilds, permanent as marble, and as cold,In warm surprises of the blood we findThe sumptuous dream unfold!

There shines the leaf and bursts the blossom sheathOn hills deep-mantled in eternal June,Or wave their whispering silver, underneathThe rainbow-cinctured moon.

Around the pillars of the palm-tree bowerThe orchids cling, in rose and purple spheres;Shield-broad the lily floats; the aloe flowerForedates its hundred years.

Along the lines of coral, white and warm,Breaks the white surf; hushed is the glassy air,And only mellower murmurs tell that stormIs raging otherwhere.

The mansion gleams with dome and arch Moresque—Ah, bliss to lie beside the jasper urnOf founts, and through the open arabesqueTo watch Canopus burn!

To sit at feasts, and fluid odors drainOf daintiest nectar that from grape is caught,While faint narcotics cheat the idle brainWith phantom shapes of thought;

Or, listening to the sweet, seductive voice,No will hath silenced, since the world began,To weigh delight unchallenged, making choice.Of earlier joys of man!

Permit the dream: our natures twofold are.Sense hath its own ideals, which prepareA rosy background for the soul's white star,Whereon it shines more fair.

Not crystal runs, dissolved from mountain snow,The poet's blood; but amber, musk, impartTheir scents, and gems their orbed or shivered glow,To feed his tropic heart.

While Form and Color undivorced remainIn every planet gilded by the sun,His craft shall forge the radiant marriage-chainThat makes them purely One!

1865.